[repomies691]

Tether supply is 4.2 billion, Madoff defrauded 60+ billion, so tether is nothing compared to Madoffs scheme. Also, tether is stablecoin - people don't buy it for investment purposes. Patio11 is still sour that he was against bitcoin when it was $1 and it seems to be difficult to get over it, therefore the strongly negative bias towards everything crypto.

However if you take into account where the writer is coming for, the article is quite good at explaining the situation.

[lawn]

Even cryptocurrency advocates should realize that Tether is extremely shady.

[spurdoman77]

Everything with crypto is shady and something the authorities would prefer not to exist. Nothing new here.

[BubRoss]

Tether has gigantic red flags including not being able to actually exchange it for dollars even though it is pegged to dollars. It's so brazen it's hard to even believe it.

[teknopurge]

Fractional reserve banking has the same problem, yet provides a real, functional purpose for finance.

Tether has a purpose - to be a savings account is not that purpose.

[repomies691]

I'm not advocating for tether. But it is not a ponzi scheme. And I think that most of the users understand what tether is - they are not excepting returns, they also understand that it is unregulated vehicle where the backing can disappear any time if the issuers get into trouble. I would guess biggest use-case is moving fiat between exchanges without having compliance issues, which you would have with banks.